The Girl With All the Gifts(105)

But then she’s about to test that hypothesis, isn’t she?

The hungry’s right arm is jammed behind it, inside the airlock space. Caldwell secures the left arm by catching it in a noose of plasticated twine and tying the free end of the twine to a bracket on the wall. She wraps the twine around her own forearm three or four times and uses her body weight to pull it tight against the hungry’s struggles. The loops of twine bite deep into her arm, where the flesh has gone from angry red to sullen purple. She feels very little pain, which is a bad sign in itself. Nerve damage in necrotised flesh is irreversible and progressive.

As quickly as she can, but carefully, she saws off the hungry’s head. It grunts and snaps its jaws at her throughout the whole of this process. Both of its arms flail violently, the left one within a tight circular arc defined by the free play of the twine. Neither arm can reach her.

The fragile upper vertebrae yield to the saw almost instantly. It’s the muscle, on which the blade alternately sticks and slides, that’s hardest. When Caldwell is through the vertebrae, the hungry’s head sags suddenly, opening the incision wide to show the severed nubs of bone, shockingly white. By contrast, the liquor that drips down from the wound on to the tray and the floor all around is mostly grey, shot with rivulets of red.

The last thin ribbon of flesh tears under the head’s own weight, and the head abruptly falls. It hits the edge of the tray, flipping it over, and rolls away across the floor.

The hungry’s body is still moving very much as it did when the head was still attached. Its arms windmill uselessly, its legs step-slide on the airlock’s grooved metal floor. Colonies of Cordyceps anchored to the spine are still trying to commandeer the dead child and make it work for the greater good of its fungal passenger. The movements slow while Caldwell bends to retrieve the head, but they haven’t entirely stopped when she straightens again and takes the head through into the lab.

Safety first. She leaves the head on the work surface for a moment or two while she returns to clear the airlock, flinging the still-twitching headless corpse out on to the road. It lies there like a reproach not just to Caldwell but to scientific endeavour in general.

Caldwell turns her back on it and slams the door. If the road to knowledge was paved with dead children–which at some times and in some places it has been–she’d still walk it and absolve herself afterwards. What other choice would she have? Everything she values is at the end of that road.

She closes the doors, returns to the lab and sets to work.





65


Melanie is waiting when Justineau and Parks finally turn into the long road that has Euston station at the other end of it. Wordlessly she points, and Justineau looks. Breathless, lathered in sweat, her legs and chest knotting in agony, it’s all she can do.

Halfway along the broad avenue, Rosie has slewed to a halt on a steep diagonal, practically touching the kerb on both sides. Directly in front of the vehicle a huge barricade blocks the street. It rises to a height of forty feet or so, which puts it higher than the houses on either side. In the low, slanting sunlight, Justineau can see that it continues over the houses, into them and beyond them. It looks like a sheer vertical, at first, but then its subtle tones resolve themselves and she can see that it’s a slope like the side of a mountain. It’s as though a million tons of dirty snow has fallen in this one spot.

Parks joins her and they continue to boggle in unison.

“Any idea?” the sergeant asks at last.

Justineau shakes her head. “You?”

“I prefer to look at all the evidence first. Then I get someone smarter than I am to explain it to me.”

They go forward slowly, alert for any hostile movement. Rosie has been in the wars, and they can see the aftermath. The dents and scrapes on the armour plating. The blood and tissue plastered around the midsection door. The small, crumpled body lying in the street, right beside the vehicle.

The body is a hungry. A child. Male, no older than four or five. His head is gone–no sign of it anywhere nearby–and his upper body is crushed almost flat, as though someone put his narrow chest in a vice and tightened it. Melanie kneels to examine him more closely, her expression solemn and thoughtful. Justineau stands over her, searching for words and not finding any. She can see that the boy wears a bracelet of hair, perhaps his own, on his right wrist. As a badge of identity, it couldn’t be clearer. He was like Melanie, not like the regular hungries.

“I’m sorry,” Justineau says.

Melanie says nothing.

A movement in Justineau’s peripheral vision makes her turn her head. Sergeant Parks is looking the same way, towards Rosie’s central section. Caroline Caldwell has stripped the duct tape away from the lab window and slid back the light baffles. She’s staring out at them, her expression hard and impassive.

Justineau goes over to the window and mouths: What are you doing?

Caldwell shrugs. She makes no move to let them in.

Justineau hammers on the window, gestures to the midsection door. Caldwell goes away for a few moments, then comes back with an A5 notepad. She holds it up to show Justineau what she’s written on the top sheet. I have to work. Very close to a breakthrough. I think you might try to stop me. Sorry.

Justineau throws out her arms, indicating the empty street, the long shadows of late afternoon. She doesn’t have to say or mime anything. The message is clear. We’re going to die.